Urgently Needed—A BROAD Outpouring in Support of Immigrants!

January 22, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

In recent months, weeks, and now practically every day, our immigrant brothers and sisters have been going into the streets and into the halls of Congress, risking arrest and deportation to challenge “business as usual,” and resist the most vicious, blatant, and criminal assault on the rights, the dignity, the humanity, and the very lives of immigrants in this country in their millions. All of those who are NOT immigrants must stand shoulder to shoulder with these courageous immigrants, pour into the streets and find every other possible way to actively refuse and stand up against this fascist regime’s advancing assault on immigrants.

The Trump/Pence regime is a fascist regime. It is creating laws and whipping up an ugly nativist sentiment and atmosphere hostile to immigrants to drive immigrants out of this country. This has become one of the cornerstones of their Make America White Again program. Trump’s use of the word “shithole” to describe the countries of Africa, Haiti, El Salvador, and others has spread everywhere. This is nothing less than cementing openly NAZI norms. Together with their Republi-fascist cohorts in Congress, and their violent police and ICE enforcers, this regime is escalating an all-round offensive aimed at ethnic cleansing. On top of their relentless search to deport undocumented immigrants across the country, they have moved against over a million immigrants who have been in this country legally, who now have had their legal status ripped away by the Trump/Pence regime.

The March 5 deadline set by the shithole in the White House is closing in on nearly 800,000 young people, known as Dreamers; the day when they could begin receiving their deportation orders. Brought here as children, the Dreamers had the right to go to school, hold jobs, and raise families, while renewing their permits every two years. But in September the white-supremacist-in-chief killed the Dreamers’ deferred status. We are now witnessing the prolonged public toying with and torture of the DACA youth, as they are threatened with being robbed of everything they have achieved, and were hoping to accomplish in their lives. This means families being ripped apart and left behind as Dreamers are sent to countries most know little or nothing about. The confrontation in Congress that has triggered the current government shutdown is about using the future of the Dreamers as a “bargaining chip,” arguing over how many other immigrants will be thrown to the wolves in “exchange” for some form of extension of DACA.

In addition, in the past two months this fascist cabal has ordered the removal of over 300,000 Haitian, Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan immigrants who had been granted temporary legal residency and the right to work in the U.S. after hurricanes and earthquakes ravaged their home countries. The message has been delivered—your “temporary protected status” is over; get out! Put yourself in the position of these immigrants, and imagine being forced to decide whether you’re going to leave your U.S.-born children behind, or make them leave the place where they were born. Many forced out are being deported to death, as documented in a January 15 New Yorker article by Sarah Stillman ("When Deportation Is a Death Sentence").

On January 10, ICE agents opened up another front in their war on the undocumented when they carried out coordinated raids targeting over 100 7-Eleven stores nationwide. This is only the beginning, with a top ICE official calling the raids “the first of many” and “a harbinger of what’s to come”—meaning the scouring of workplaces large and small in the hunt for undocumented immigrants.

And now this regime is taking another serious and major step toward fascism by using ICE agents the way Hitler used the Gestapo—as a political weapon against those standing up against their intolerable treatment of immigrants. In New York ICE just carried out the politically targeted arrest and detention of two prominent immigrant leaders, and ICE is also targeting another leading immigrant activist in Seattle, Washington.

In addition, ICE is being used to crush the sanctuary cities and states^* as the sanctuary movement is spreading around the country. Testifying before a Senate committee January 16, the new head of Homeland Security declared: “To further protect our communities, we must end so-called 'sanctuary' jurisdictions.” ICE has announced that it is mobilizing ICE agents from around the country to descend on the San Francisco Bay Area to enforce a reign of terror against the undocumented, explicitly to pressure the politicians in these cities and states to cease their resistance and agree to have their state and local police become enforcers of immigration law

And in an open declaration that they intend to use ICE as a national force for the political repression against its opponents, Homeland Security has threatened to bring charges against elected officials who continue “refusing to implement immigration law.” This is completely contrary to the law, and represents a rupture toward new, fascist norms in how political disagreements are resolved. It represents a dangerous advance in consolidating fascist norms.

Stop thinking like an American, and start thinking about humanity

Action is urgently needed, by thousands, and then millions, of native-born Americans and citizens—including especially but not only white people—through active refusal and in every other way to stand with our sisters and brothers in demonstrations and other forms of solidarity. Such solidarity is critically important—it is life-and-death, right now, for millions—and it can play a critical role as well in building the spirit and organization needed to drive out this whole wretched and extremely dangerous fascist regime.

It is time for the people of this country to stop thinking like Americans, and start thinking about humanity. Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party and architect of a new synthesis of communism has said:

American Lives Are Not More Important Than Other People’s Lives.
BAsics 5:7

Following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in World War 2, every Jewish person was ordered to put on a yellow star so they could be publicly identified. In defiance, many, many people in the Netherlands who were not Jews responded by wearing a yellow star as a show of defiance of the decree—fully aware of the risk they were taking. It is on us—people of all nationalities—to learn from and wholeheartedly take up their example. The time is now.

* Sanctuary cities and states are those limiting their cooperation with the Trump/Pence regime's effort to hunt down undocumented immigrants in their jurisdictions. Since the Trump/Pence regime took power, the number of sanctuary cities has dramatically increased, joined by colleges and others who have also announced that they are sanctuaries. [back]

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